Column: Chicago sports media pioneer Jeannie Morris fought sexism with determination and unlimited grace

None of Jeannie Morris’ obituaries mentioned the weekly local show she did with Alex Karras in 1972 for Chicago’s ABC-7 to complement “Monday Night Football” telecasts.

Maybe with good reason.

“It was the worst thing I’ve ever been involved in,” Morris, a pioneering woman in sports media who died Monday at age 85, told the Tribune a few years after the show aired.

Karras wasn’t yet a big TV star when he was paired with Morris. His NFL playing career had ended after the 1970 season, and he was a reliably entertaining talk-show guest.

There had been a few bit parts for him in Hollywood, but his full-time acting career hadn’t yet blossomed. His stint as a droll “MNF” analyst was still a couple of years away.

It’s possible Karras was misled into thinking he had a greater role in the Channel 7 show, both behind the scenes and in front of the cameras, than he actually did.

We’ll also allow that the future sitcom star of “Webster” might well have evolved before he died in 2012.

But the picture Morris painted from memory was not a pretty one.

“They hired me without consulting Alex, and Alex was furious,” Morris said. “He was absolutely livid.

“I mean, the most dignified position he wants to see a woman in is on his lap. And there I was, right next to him — his equal. He didn’t dig that.”

Ouch.

“Actually,” Morris said, “Alex is a funny man. He’s sort of the male equivalent of the dumb blonde. You’ve got to be pretty smart to act so stupid, and still be funny.”

Ouch again, even if that was veiled in something resembling a compliment.

What makes her experience and comments about Karras worth revisiting is it was a rare instance of Morris venting about the barriers and boors she ran up against in a career of not just breaking news but breaking new ground for women covering sports.

Working first in print, beginning in the late 1960s, and then TV, the pushback had to have worn on Morris.

For the public, however, her steely resolve was cloaked in charm. If her teeth were clenched, it was hidden behind a smile. No one intimidated her.

She stood her ground with utter grace.

When Morris, on assignment for the Chicago Daily News in 1970, wrote about being denied access to Indianapolis 500 time trials solely because she lacked a Y chromosome — “Sorry, lady” — she shared frustration without anger.

Morris often spoke matter-of-factly about the time she was made to sit on top of the press box in a Minnesota blizzard to cover a Bears road game because her press credential specifically barred “women and children” from where the media men worked.

“That wasn’t much fun, but it makes for a good story,” Morris recalled without a trace of resentment in a video produced by the Chicago Bears. “It’s a good illustration of how it was back in the day.”

Who among us wouldn’t rage at the memory?

It doesn’t take much imagination to envision the braying martinet who would enforce such nonsense. There remain a fair number of yahoos who have a fit when women get a byline or microphone to discuss sports.

Morris always recognized what she was up against, and she knew just how hard she had to work to be credible and accepted amid such resistance. You had to be better to endure.

“A woman doing sports on TV can’t ever appear to be dumb,” she said in one interview.

In another, Morris voiced concern around the time former CBS-2 general manager Bob Wussler, then head of CBS Sports, hired Phyllis George, a former Miss America with limited TV experience, for “The NFL Today” and “CBS Sports Spectacular.”

“If I were Wussler,” Morris said, “I would be very careful about how I used women. It’s not that I don’t think it’s right and just. But you have to take into account the viewer reaction.”

Morris enjoyed her own national exposure with CBS, much as she had with NBC, which in 1975 made her the first woman to report on a Super Bowl pregame show.

“Jeannie is a rare woman, and the real test is that she’s been accepted by other sportswriters,” said Johnny Morris, Jeannie’s one-time husband and former Chicago Bears player.

Her entrée to sports journalism at age 32 had been Johnny, who parlayed being an undersized Bears receiver into a huge media career of his own.

Chicago’s now-defunct American (which later became Chicago Today before folding) dangled $50 a week for him to write a column in 1968.

Johnny said he wasn’t much of a writer and suggested Jeannie, who initially penned pieces about football in a female-oriented section, and then the sports section. Eventually, she tackled other sports and moved to the Daily News.

Johnny and Jeannie would work together at NBC-5. He anchored sportscasts. She handled human interest stuff.

When Brent Musburger left CBS-2 for full-time network work in 1975, they both came aboard and bumped up their combined pay from $90,000 to $150,000 ($110,000 for him and $40,000 for her).

Mostly, Jeannie traded in features. But give her something meaty and she would whip it into something special.

Type in “Jeannie Morris” on YouTube. You’ll find a multipart series she did for CBS-2 on the ethics of giving racehorses medications.

There’s also a pair of short Channel 2 documentaries on Michael Jordan’s early days with the Chicago Bulls that were mined as source material for ESPN’s “The Last Dance.”

Contrary to what many might believe, her 1971 best-seller, “Brian Piccolo: A Short Season,” did not inspire the famous made-for-TV movie “Brian’s Song,” about the dying Bears running back who roomed with Gale Sayers and was a teammate of Johnny’s. Her book came out not long before ABC aired the film, which was based on a chapter in Sayers’ memoir, “I Am Third.”

“A Short Season” started as a collaboration with Piccolo to give him something to do while being treated for cancer and is a powerful and thorough telling of his story well worth reading.

(Incidentally, it has been a rough stretch of late for writers connected to “Brian’s Song.” Sayers died at 77 in September and William Blinn, the film’s screenwriter, died in October at 83. Al Silverman, Sayers’ co-author on “I Am Third,” died last year at 92.)

Seventeen years later after its publication, in 1988, she would come across a 1967 photo of herself and five other Bears wives at a fashion show. In “Awakening from the American Dream” for Chicago Times magazine, Morris reflected on how none was married to a football player anymore. Joy Piccolo and Kathy Rabold were widows. Linda Sayers, Angela Cadile and Faith Petitbon, as well as Morris, were divorced.

By then, Morris had left CBS-2 to become an independent producer. Some projects involved sports. Others did not.

For 20 years, she had been an inspiration for young women who might not otherwise have entertained the idea of covering sports. That, along with her work and the trail she blazed, are her professional legacy.

It’s unfortunate there aren’t more women on the air today following Morris’ footsteps. But progress can be maddeningly slow and doesn’t always travel a straight line.

It’s a good story, and Jeannie Morris is still part of it even if she isn’t around to tell it better than anyone else.